This K-23 award will allow the candidate, Dr. Tammy Sims, to gain the skills, knowledge and experience required to become a leader in substance abuse research, focusing on adolescent tobacco dependence and cessation research. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of illness and death in the U. S. Since approximately 80% of smokers become daily smokers before age 20 years, tobacco use may be viewed as a pediatric disease. However, while the origins and motivations for tobacco use are found in youth, assessments and interventions are largely developed for, and with adults. To achieve her research and career development goals, the candidate will follow a career development plan, at the University of Wisconsin, designed to provide knowledge, skills and experience in 6 core competencies required to be a successful independent clinical investigator: 1) research excellence in the area of tobacco addiction 2) biostatistics and study design 3) research ethics 4) leadership and management 5) presentation and teaching, and 6) scientific writing. This will be accomplished through implementation of an individualized learning plan that includes: 1) academic coursework to develop additional general and health services research skills;2) mentorship and consultation with nationally and internationally recognized experts in tobacco dependence and treatment;3) mentorship by faculty sensitive to the unique needs and issues facing minority and women academic faculty;and, 4) innovative research using proactive telephone quit lines to gather insight into adolescent tobacco dependence and its treatment. The proposed mentored research has two specific aims: 1) to evaluate a proactive telephone quitline counseling intervention designed to help adolescent tobacco users quit and 2) to characterize individual differences related to motivation to quit smoking, follow-through in a quit attempt, and quitting success among tobacco-using adolescents by examining two motivational constructs: motives for dependence and motives for cessation. This research will provide needed insight into the nature of adolescent tobacco dependence and useful information about a promising new treatment for adolescent smoking cessation, the teen tobacco quitline.